ive bought a quail cage and accessories, bedding etc and katie thear's book and im due to buy some japanese quail on saturday. i just wondered what the best ratio of males to females is and wheres a local or internet supplier of quail pellets? one last rather odd question is i can find coloured hen egg boxes everywhere but only transparent plastic quail egg boxes. i would really like pink cardboard ones does anyone know of a supplier?

Yes, the minimum is 1:3 male/female if you can get a 1:5 this is much better.The hens get plucked very little, only on the head.

I've no idea where you can get quail pellets from, I've asked my suppliers and there is no feed mills in the North of England that do them, maybe only Marriages do them?

As for cardboard egg boxes, I've contacted every (I think) supplier and they only stock plastic boxes. I know you can get them I've seen them, but can not find out where. Some one on here found out and they were going to cost a lot of money because there is not much demand. You can make the plastic boxes more intresting by getting some labels printed for them, I just got a 1,000 done. They look very good, I just hope I can sell a few more boxes a week or it looks like scrambled eggs again for tea!

i got a sack of layers pellets for poultry which seem to be doing the trick from 'pets at home'! much cheaper than the tiny bags i was getting from the garden centre. ive ordered the clear egg boxes - apparently people dont want the cardboard ones as you cant see the egg markings through the box - whatever happened to opening the box to see the surprise?